American beech
Fagus grandifolia

American beech is a long lived eastern deciduous tree, useful for its wood quality and production of nuts valuable to wildlife diets. Slow growing and very shade tolerant, American beech is a climax successional species.

Light
High shade tolerance and slow growth rate call for methods that provide some degree of canopy cover, such as shelterwood and group and single tree selections.

Water American beech is found on a wide variety of soils, but generally grows best on mesic sites.

Growth

Size
A medium to large tree up to 100 feet tall with a rounded crown. Often found in thickets produced by root suckering. Old trees may be surrounded by a ring of young beech.

Fun Facts
Beech is very shade tolerant, and assumes dominance on many northern hardwood sites in association with sugar maple and yellow birch. Older, large trees are often hollow and were once used commonly as culverts in road building. Beech bark disease causes significant mortality and defect. This “disease” is caused by an initial invasion by beech scale followed by infection with a fungus which can severely deform the bark and kill trees.